From bench to bedside: the growing use of translational research in cancer medicine.

TLDR

Cancer causes one in eight deaths worldwide, and despite aggressive treatment many patients still die, driving the expansion of translational research that leverages genomic and proteomic advances to develop targeted therapies and requires collaboration among researchers, clinicians, and industry. This review aims to highlight the importance of translational research in developing clinically relevant therapeutic strategies. The authors discuss current therapeutic approaches and introduce a range of investigational topics to illustrate how laboratory findings are translated into clinical applications.

Abstract

Cancer is responsible for one in eight deaths worldwide, with more than twelve million new cases diagnosed yearly. A large percentage of patients die after developing cancer despite aggressive treatment, indicating a need for new approaches to cancer therapy. The push for development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic agents has allowed translational cancer research to flourish. Genomic and proteomic technologies have generated an enormous amount of information critical to expanding our understanding of cancer biology. New research on the differences between normal and malignant cell biology has paved the way for the development of drugs targeted to specific biological molecules, potentially increasing antitumor efficacy while minimizing the toxicity to the patient that is seen with conventional therapeutics. Current targets in include regulators of cell cycle, angiogenesis, apoptosis, DNA repair, and growth factors and their receptors. Collaboration among researchers, clinicians, and pharmaceutical companies is vital to conducting clinical trials to translate laboratory findings into clinically applicable therapeutics. In this review, we discuss current therapeutic approaches and present an introduction to a wide range of topics undergoing investigation in an effort to highlight the importance of translational research in the development of clinically relevant therapeutic strategies.